


Fifty Shades of Earl Grey

by MadamMortis, stormus



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Bad Parenting, Burning Sun-like Sexual Intensity, Character Study, Comedy, Comfort/Angst, Crack Fic, Dark Comedy, Far Harbor, Finest Bone China, Formative Relationships, Gen, Hoarding, Misguided Character Study, Mugs Mugs and MORE Mugs!, Olfactory Assault, Other, Parades of Increasingly Mad Relatives, Platonic Romance, Possible Objectiphilia, Quality Earthenware and Ceramics, The Allen Lee Experience, Ugly Porcelain Knick-Knacks, dark humour, manliness, past trauma, toxic masculinity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-05-29 21:34:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15082184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadamMortis/pseuds/MadamMortis, https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormus/pseuds/stormus
Summary: Not many know the true tale of Allen Lee. Weapons vendor, missionary buster, card-carrying ignoramus and all round local hothead, most assume him a straightforward creature prone to thoughts no deeper than a gnat's hot tub. For the most part, they would be right, for as his father once told him forcefully, as with all things his father undertook, and at a volume sufficient to enrage neighbours and indelibly impress upon young minds beset by even the most persistent of wanderlusts, 'no man ever lost themselves to introspection! Thinkin' never chopped wood, bludgeoned Yao Guai nor smith'd gun!' However, beneath the abrasive exterior, all-pervading equal parts irresistible and intimidating manly musk, and beard so mighty potential conquests never seen again quite clearly remain lost within lies not only a shamefully weak chin, but the layered and complex personality of a deeply sensitive and lonely soul. One that once found light through the stifling fog of its childhood in the cool, soft curve of the most delicate of tableware.For only a real man may know the soft caress of finest bone china...





	1. Of dapper supermutants and musty haystacks

**Author's Note:**

> We welcome you, dear reader, to this expedition into the formative years of nobody's favourite gun salesman and beard canvas Allen Lee. This journey promises to take a tour of the deepest recesses of his mind and experiences and answer all of the questions nobody ever asked. No stone will be left unturned, no crevasse undredged. Together we will learn exactly what it is that made Allen Lee the upstanding paragon of manliness he is today, and of the great love that brought such light and softness into his rather red-faced and unpleasant little life. 
> 
> WARNING: Do not sit too close to computer screen. Burns may be sustained from prolonged exposure to pure sexual energy exuded by Allen Lee. Acts undertaken within the text are performed by experienced objectiphiles and are not to be emulated at home. The authoresses are not liable for any injuries, groinal or otherwise sustained during the consumption of this fic. In the event of extended boners caused by viewing this fic or any related content, nurses trained in the relief of extendo-boners will be on hand to offer treatment. 
> 
> __________________________
> 
> This fic is the culmination of various ponderings on the question of the Far Harbor mugs sitting in pride of place on Allen Lee's counter, and exactly why he is so attached to them. Why does he display them so prominently? How does he know if you steal them, no matter where you steal them from? What is the connection? Are they simply decorative, or is there something more to it? That, paired with wanting to collab equals this:

_Fifty Shades of Earl Grey_

  _~~~~~~~~_

“Three hundred and twenty four caps for forty shells!?” Rhona flung her arms in the air, apparently no care for what they knocked down or whose faces were slapped. “That's damn ridiculous!”

Allen Lee felt the curve of a smug, thoroughly self-satisfied smile, lips emerging from the tendrils of his thick and shaggy beard long enough to taunt the young woman in front of him with an air of superiority belonging to none other than history's greatest victors. “Welcome to the shit list.”

She seemed unimpressed. “Well don't I feel honoured.”

“It's hardly an exclusive list.” Frequented by a long procession of mortal enemies, complainants and anyone to have looked at him cock-eyed. “Now you want the ammo or not?”

If only someone had come up with a way to harness smugness. Some old world scientist perhaps, with the know how to convert it into electrical energy, or some other resource for the benefit of mankind. There was enough emanating from his befuzzed fizzog to power a small town for several years. Something which greatly irked the young woman in front of him, he observed.

“Drop dead.”

“Your loss.” Allen Lee turned his attention away from her, craning his neck to look up at the supermutant stood dutifully nearby, showing great interest in the mugs lined up in the display case atop the counter. “What about you, big guy? You need to top up your supply?”

“Strong take bullets from dead,” came the simple reply. “Use to make more dead.”

“Fair enough.”

“Why human collect junk?” Strong gestured to the mugs with a clumsy sweep of his large hand, inspiring a sharp and panicked intake of breath from Allen Lee. “Wastes space for meat.”

The woman, Rhona had clearly caught the outraged and disgusted twisting of Allen Lee's lips which had taken out a mortgage on his face and were in the process of moving in all their stuff for an extended stay, and laughed, actually had the gall to laugh when he slammed his hands down on the counter top and glared up at Strong beside her.

“You makin' fun of my mugs!?” Allen Lee demanded, righteous in his fury, spoiling for a fight no matter how ludicrous. 

Strong didn't seem particularly switched on to the justifiable rage in Allen Lee's dulcet tones, though rather than engage the angry human further, he elected simply to scratch his head and look briefly to Rhona, finding her the more agreeable of the two, surprisingly. “Why humans keep junk? Only slow them down. Should get rid, or share, like supermutants.”

“Life would be much more pleasant,” she acknowledged, and patted his arm affectionately, with what may well be a commiseratory undertone. “Until the rest of us are enlightened enough to realise that, there'll be a lot more junk collecting.”

Their conversation combusted what remained of Allen Lee's notably short fuse in a blaze of Vesuvian rage, him unsure whether it be the fact that they excluded him from the discussion and carried it on before him, or that they continued to slight his precious collection. He let loose a chesty snarl, the manliness of such an action drawing Rhona's attention on him once more, and doubtless leaving her weak at the knees in the face of such a domineering specimen as he took the opportunity to enquire in what was very much his outdoor voice “You callin' my mugs junk now!?”

She threw a look at Allen Lee, one that spoke of pity, and more than a little bemusement. It took him aback to be confronted with it, only to enrage him further after a moments consideration. She did not appear in any mood to listen to his sensible ravings, and turned her back on him, tugging Strong with her by a thoroughly ineffectual grip on his enormous wrist. “C'mon, big Guy. Let's... leave this one to it.”

Strong ' _harrumphed_ ' under his breath, made to swipe away the moisture settled upon his brow with a handkerchief withdrawn from inside one of his wrist wraps, and replace his crumpled fedora atop his bald head perhaps a touch more petulantly than was proper for a socially conscious supermutant. “Strong agree.” He lingered a moment, causing Rhona to halt at the extreme of his arm while he made another considerate visual pass of Allen Lee's collection with a bored and somewhat critical eye. “Mugs are cheap. Homer Laughlin Golden Wheat pattern is worth more.”

With that, he walked away, but not before administering a parting slap to the counter top with enough force that the delicate ceramic items thereon where displaced and upended.

With all the haste of a starving wolf to an ailing radrabbit, Allen Lee threw himself forward to begin righting them, ever so carefully placing each back in its proper place. As he struggled, he caught Rhona's quiet murmur of “damn, he's got a thing for those mugs” and Strong's rejoining “beard human is stranger than other humans” to which she laughed. Again! Actually laughed again! At him – Allen Lee!

However, they were both correct in their observations, simplistic as they may be. Hunched over his precious bounty, Allen Lee felt he would have cracked a smile at their words, should he be less respected and of lower societal import. A man to be taken less seriously within the community of Far Harbor. Because how little the two of them knew. How little they _all_ knew...

 

~~~~~

 

The great and grand tale that is the Homeric Odyssey of the eponymous Allen Lee began, dear reader, as many heroic legacies do, in humble obscurity. In a time before The Fog smothered the land, poisoning all in its wake. Before the synths and their tambourine banging _love & peace_ attitude installed themselves atop the mountain, and the Radeaters arrived and implemented their dogmatic campaign and poison upon all and sundry. In that time when everything was perfect and tinted a continuous rose shade known colloquially as ' **The Past®** '.

It was during that perfect age, within the limited space of a beshingled two-up-two-down in the greater town of Far Harbor, in the midst of a violent storm, that Allen Lee made his entry to the world in the same manner that he would continue to live every day from then on: red, squalling and brimming with outrage in close proximity to an elevated flat surface of some description. Upon first seeing the howling bundle of pith and vinegar that constituted her first born, Mrs Lee breathed a heavy sigh, possibly of awe, though historians would later contend that it was more likely heartfelt disappointment, and Mr Lee had responded with a gruff grunt that varied neither in pitch nor brevity from all others within his limited vocabulary, and turned away possibly due to lack of interest. And so the family Lee had expanded by one, bringing the number of inhabitants in the beshingled two-up-two-down to a round and mostly even four.

Mr Lee was a gunsmith by trade. Though lacking the tools necessary in traditional smithery, he managed somehow to make do with stand-ins scavenged from uninhabited homes and makeshift variants he had beaten into shape with his fists coupled with grim determination and bloody mindedness, two commodities he possessed an abundance of. He was a tall, imposing man, unusually so for a resident of post apocalyptic Maine, though exceedingly short in both manner and temper. A stoic man unless roused to anger, possessed of all the softness of an I-beam stubbornly wedged upright in concrete, he tended to exist wholly within a self-sustaining miasma of potential rage and unimpressed stonfacedness. Rumour had it that he had once punched an angler to death for having looked at him funny, only to extinguish his cigar squarely in the ex-creature's accused and lifeless eyeball. His most distinguishing feature, and certainly that for which he was best known beyond one gently twitching brow powered by perpetually boiling anger was his beard.

Never had such a mighty arrangement had any business being on a human face. A great snarl of dark bristles clinging to the deep crags of his weathered jaw, and mighty peak of his manly chin. Thick and tangled and sturdy enough to host an entire family of honey badgers, should they be brave enough to arrange a viewing. There was seldom a more towering spire of unadulterated manliness than Mr Lee, a force so much to be reckoned with that a dusky yao guai should sooner slink off to its cave in shame of its comparable inadequacies than attempt it.

As a match to such an epitome of all things male, Mrs Lee may at first glance appear meek, and retiring. A simple mistake to make, until one realises that her distant forebears hailed from across the sea, from a place named Bakewell in the rough North of somewhere, and had found themselves stranded on The Island that fateful day of nuclear devastation following a holiday awarded as a prize in an over 50s magazine competition. To this day it remains a topic of hot debate within her extended family as to what could be considered worse, nuclear apocalypse, a holiday of the type that could conceivably constitute a magazine prize, or hailing from Bakewell.

As the product of such esteemed lineage, Mrs Lee was a short woman of dour countenance and outlook, tufted by a mop of untamed blonde hair, and with a propensity towards answering hails and rudimentary questions in words of one syllable or less. Let it not be said that she was a lazy creature, for Mrs Lee held the well-earned reputation of routinely working her fingers to the bone. She also bore the unenviable burden of running the Lee household as per her traditional upbringing. All meals should consist of meat enfolded in pastry served with peeled vegetables dusted liberally with salt and served with dripping where available. Sides, floors, basins, husband and son to be washed thoroughly and scrubbed clean with Abraxo before sitting down at the table.

Mr Lee, though averse to displaying emotion less explosive than nuclear meltdown scale rage did feel deep affection for his wife, and referred to her often as a good woman, and on occasions of particular weakness could be heard to compliment her with the reverent acknowledgement that 'no woman rings a chicken's neck so well.'

Finally, the fourth member of the family Lee was Great Aunt Hortense. Often referred to by the family Lee simply as Aunt Hortense, and by the other denizens of Far Harbor as 'that batshit old mummy', Hortense was a lady of advanced age, taken to rising from her bed each day with assistance from Mrs Lee to ensconce herself within the rickety old rocking chair beside the hearth, where she would remain until supper. Each day was spent staring into space, occasionally emerging from her private journey to inform an absentee named Neville of her findings. It was, from the day young Allen Lee learned to walk, to the day he would find himself musing on a dapper supermutant's quiet assassination of his character, a mystery as to who exactly Neville was. Whether he be some long departed acquaintance of his Great Aunt, an old flame of her possibly misspent youth, or perhaps some disembodied spirit, he would likely never know. Though any who was not fortunate enough to themselves _be_ Allen Lee may be hard pressed to imagine any self respecting spirit inclined to haunt the household Lee. This was not an affliction Allen Lee himself did suffer from. It remained unclear to Allen Lee which parent of his could claim ownership of Aunt Hortense, though it was his mother who assumed sole responsibility for her care, and would occasionally acknowledge her nonsensical ramblings with the odd grunt and occasional one word answer as she worked.

Allen Lee, from the time he found himself heartily berated and instructed to "be a man!" by his father after injuring himself climbing out of his orange crate in an effort to learn how to walk, would spend much of his time around Aunt Hortense's rocking chair occasionally becoming entangled in the trailing end of her manure-coloured shawl, or finding one or more of his undersized feet crushed beneath the active and creaking rockers of her chair. Each instance was treated with the unchanging response from Aunt Hortense of a gleeful cackle and bark of “Damn Germans! This is why we lost the war!” Never did such a response stem his tears. This continued until Allen Lee was six years old.

It was around this time that Mr and Mrs Lee saw fit to introduce a fifth member of the family Lee in the form of Allen Lee's younger sister. As Mr Lee had declined to name his son, Mrs Lee had asked what he should like to name his daughter, to which he had replied “I don't know. Call 'er Fag Ash Lil for all I care!”

Mrs Lee subsequently named her Sandra, after Mr Lee's mother as she believed it would please her husband.

Allen Lee had thought very little of the new addition. So much so in fact, that he did not realise that she existed as an entity until her being meant the loss of his bed. Hitherto she had merely been a negligible presence, not a means of displacing him. Allen Lee had paid her very little attention until that point. Any attention paid to her following the loss of his bed would be fleeting, as he came to invest his limited attention in something that would become a life long love.

Aside from her frequent forays off the Earthly plane and her intimate relationship with Neville, Aunt Hortense bore the hard earned title of chronic hoarder. Like some workaholic pack rat, she had amassed a vast store of junk from every corner of The Island. Should Allen Lee have been an imaginative boy, the very thought of her travelling the length and breadth of The Island ought conjure up tales of monsters battled and Trappers thwarted and other such derring-do. Unfortunately, Allen Lee was a very boring child, and such a fruitful opportunity for self-made diversion sailed neatly over his grubby little head.

Aunt Hortense had accrued such a collection over the years that it posed something of a dilemma for the family Lee. It was so vast that it took up an entire two rooms of the two-up-two-down, and a great deal of the leaky attic to boot. Only the kitchen and the living room remained fully accessible. Mr and Mrs Lee had long ago repurposed the living room for their own use as a bedroom, and Aunt Hortense slept in her own bed in the Master bedroom upstairs at the end of a long and difficult to navigate jungle path, where she lay amongst her worldly possessions as some Ancient Egyptian Queen reposed upon her litter (not that any members of the Lee household would ever make such a comparison, lacking any knowledge of Egypt, Ancient or otherwise, and that should they compare Hortense as such would require a degree of levity thought distasteful and a waste of time in the Lee household).

With the core members of the family Lee served, the addition of both Allen Lee and Sandra Lee posed a problem. In her capacity as a newborn, Sandra Lee had inherited the orange crate beside the stove that had served Allen Lee as a crib and later a bed that could not accommodate his legs, but what of Allen Lee? Aunt Hortense was loathe to part with any of her possessions and attempting to remove them would invariably provoke a prompt and loud reaction as she awakened from her inner travellings with all the certainty of 'I was watching that' from a slumbering grandparent on switching off the television they had been slumped in front of. Thus Mr and Mrs Lee seized upon the only course of action that feasibly remained open to them. Like so many boxes of Aunt Hortense's worldly goods that had been in the way, Allen Lee was relegated to the leaky attic, and the musty haystack therein.

“Let Allen Lee sleep in't hay!” Mr Lee had raged on the rare occasion his wife had sought his counsel on matters of household upkeep. “I'd have given left arm for haystack in leaky attic! Livin' under woodpile down't Lumber Mill made me man I am today! Tha's six years old! High time 'e grew up and started being a man!”

And so it was, while encased snugly within the musty haystack on a particularly dark night that Allen Lee first encountered that which would bring untold joy into his small, lonely and rather sad existence.

A radstorm raged above the shingled two-up-two-down, rattling the rickety eaves with all the din of a thousand Aunt Hortenses in unsteady rocking chairs performing with military uniformity on a parquet floor. It brought with it sickly green clouds that proceeded to pour hefty droplets of lightly glowing rain though the damaged tin roof with total disregard for unimaginative children sleeping in musty haystacks below.

The bucket collecting errant water from the leaky roof gradually began to glow green, the thin steel illuminated by its eerily beautiful, luminescent contents. It should have been soothing, as much as sickening, were Allen Lee not beset by both an inability to sleep and a festering feeling of resentment at having been cheated out of his orange crate. Angered by the natural world's complete disregard for his sleep patterns, by the existence of Sandra Lee and her usurping of his bedding, Allen Lee unearthed himself from his musty haystack, like a molerat emerging from a soft patch of stinking mud, and turned his impotent rage on the boxes of Aunt Hortense's worldly goods piled around him.

Should he have been larger, stronger and quite simply older than six years, the destruction Allen Lee wrought would undoubtedly have been greater, yet still doubtfully impressed his father. As it was, Allen Lee turned his ire at the world on anything small enough and light enough for him to carry.

Ugly, slightly mouldering cushions went flying, flung by the tiny hand of vengeance! Soiled one-eyed teddy bears, moth-eaten doilies and little wooden figurines all felt his small and frankly negligible wrath.

A large and hirsute spider counted itself lucky that its aggressor grabbed it in error, hurled into a clump of soggy newspaper from which it disdainfully scuttled in order to scale the wall and set up shop above Allen Lee's musty haystack, from where it could glower and fill his bed with the dried out husks of its future victims.

In this howling rampage of violent fury, Allen Lee reached into a box marked ' _PRECIOUS!'_ in Aunt Hortense's scratchy handwriting, and closed his hand around something cool, and smooth, and curved. It was as though a helpful soul had elected to open the floodgates and release the roiling, foamy water surging over the dam wall, battering the poor sapling clinging desperately amongst the torrent. His rage fled.

From the green and structurally unsound box, Allen Lee took a single porcelain teacup. He turned it over in his tiny hands, wide-eyed stare glued to the shining object between his sticky fingertips as though bewitched. What was this fine thing that calmed his burning anger and soothed his infant soul? He ran his thumbs over it, memorising the smooth feel of its soft contours beneath their pads. Its pleasing shape which he would one day come to understand as elegant appeared almost like the bell up in the tower of the ruined church near the house. At one side was a handle, slim and rounded as the stem of a flower bowed beneath the weight of a gentle summer's rain. Its perfect glaze shone so bright, imbued with an ethereal glow, like some otherworldly creature in the combined light of the storm and the rainwater from the bucket. Upon its sides, identical front and back, was a songbird unlike any of the diseased gulls Allen Lee had seen previously. It was blue-feathered, white breasted, its beak open as it undoubtedly presented sweet music to the skies above. A heavenly aria on which his beleaguered spirit could soar!

All else paled into a distant thrum, a far off drumbeat settled alongside that of his heart. An unheard part of the fabric of existence so far below his notice that it simply no longer mattered. This in his hands. This did.

This delicate, soft and smooth thing – all rounded, gentle edges finished with such care and so very, very fragile. It was the softness, the gentility his life so lacked. The opposite to his hard, uninterested parents. His mother, too busy to make time for Allen Lee. His father, hard and unyielding, everything the world expected Allen Lee himself to be. A man, as he was so often instructed to be by his father. Simple, unlike Aunt Hortense and the madness that so consumed her days and stole her nights. This gentle, soft, simple thing in his hands. It was everything he lacked.

Allen Lee examined it again, bringing it close to his angry little face that he could see it clearly, could press his cheek to it. This thing, he thought, seemed similar to a cup. But not like any cup he had seen before. The cups he knew: tall, rigid beakers without a handle by which to hold them and fashioned from battered tin into a rectangular shape by the firm hand of his father.

“No man drinks from anything less!” Mr Lee had proclaimed, incensed that his son's small hands had trouble holding the unwieldy behemoths. “A real man grasps his beaker! Don't you forget that, Allen Lee!”

They were not like this.

This in his manky fingers, this was not a thing to be grasped, but to be held. Cradled.

Curious, the maybe cup held daintily in his wee hands, Allen Lee peered inside the mouldy green box with Aunt Hortense's scratchy writing on the outside, and for the first time in his life felt his perpetually red and unpleasant little face light up in a smile.

Other items of a similar material lay within, a feast of shapes and sizes, colours and patterns. Oh for the joy of young Allen Lee at that moment! Such was his joy that a strange, new feeling seized him, something in his chest that wanted to escape. And so he laughed. Allen Lee laughed, joyful and euphoric, as none of his forebears Lee had ever been previous.

“Here! Allen Lee!”

The boom of his father's harsh voice frightened Allen Lee, the delicate piece with the beautiful blue songbird tumbled from his grasp. It shattered against the rough floorboards, blue feathered beauty, soft and gentle shapes reduced to sharp and jagged edges. The sight of it broken around his bare toes wrought a deep and true sob from the very depths of Allen Lee's destitute little soul. In that moment, a part of him had broken alongside those perfect wings.

“What's that racket up there!?” Barked his father just below the trap door from the attic. “Keep out of yer Aunt's things and get thee to bed! Else I'll tan yer hide and ye'll sleep in't woodshed!”

Allen Lee did as he was told, running back to his musty haystack and burrowing deep inside.

“That snifflin' I hear, Boy!? First gigglin' and now snifflin'! What have I told thee?! Be a man! Yer a disgrace, Allen Lee!”

Within his musty haystack, despite the anger of his father, Allen Lee could not stem his tears. Deep sadness rent his small heart asunder, broken with the destruction of the beautiful songbird, the softness of its curves and glaze torn away from him and made jagged and pointy as everything else in his life. The softness so desperately craved, ripped from Allen Lee's dirty fingers, the water snatched from a dying man in the desert, taken from him and forbidden by his father's demand that he be a man, as he should be. He must remain in his musty haystack, not rummage through the rest of Aunt Hortense's things, where others of the songbird's kind did reside. Though not the songbird herself...

No. Allen Lee must be a man. Allen Lee must deny himself the softness he so craved, though it resided only a mere few feet away. Allen Lee must deny himself.

And yet, standing upon the edge of a deep precipice from which there would be no re-emergence, no handholds in the smooth, softly contoured and glazed rocks of its sides. There would be no escape. There was no escape.

No escape for Allen Lee...

 


	2. Of picnics and pleather suits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so, the prolific tale of one Allen Lee continues...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been a long time coming and for that, I owe my co-author stormus the most sincere of apologies. (Patient and lovely lady that you are!) Following up on her first instalment is however no small feat and one I undertake with the knowledge that my meagre efforts naturally dim in comparison to the Odyssean splendour that is her literary prowess. I pray that I can do this glorious tale the justice it so rightly deserves! The story of Allen Lee demands nothing less!
> 
> A story that quickly gains unwieldy traction with each messed up interaction that occurs between the authoresses and a near sociopathic propensity to push the envelope of dark humour that enth degree further. The inspiration for this chapter came partly from my attempts to share my country's culture with my good friend stormus and lo if the Ibis song was not the best educational tool to get my point across. This naturally devolved into an affiliation with Allen Lee and his being the unequivocal human equivalent of the Ibis in all its stinky, bin juice drinking glory and bada bing, bada boom - this aberration is the end result.
> 
> Warnings remain as such from chapter one with perhaps a little extra consideration for a certain scene that draws far too much attention to what little is going on inside of Allen Lee's pants. Believe you me; it was as awful for me to write it, as it would be for you to read it. We hope you enjoy and more so, that you remember where you were at the time you read this; for it shall not be long before this illustrious story joins its namesake amongst the pantheon of sexy, dime store erotica that liberally litter the shelves of podunk bookstores everywhere. I don't know about stormus but I've already planned a down payment on a boat and a jet ski with gold trims. And my very own Loughlin Wheat Pattern tea set, of course. From which I will drink five hundred dollar champagne out of.
> 
> As such, and with much aplomb and without further ado, I give you this: The long and not at all awaited or anticipated second chapter of Five Shades of Earl Grey: The Allen Lee story!

 

**_Fifty Shades of Earl Grey - Chapter 2_ **  

**~**

 As the ocean mist settled upon the rooftops like a dusty cataract, Allen Lee permitted a small, self-satisfied smile to grace the barely there veneer of his lips. Another successful day spent flagrantly fleecing both residents and visitors to Far Harbour alike. The efforts of which could be measured in the bulging cap sack clutched by the neck in a vice like grip that would have made his dear departed mother proud and the heady aura of smugness liberally anointing from every pore of Allen Lee’s paunchy, hair flecked body.

  
A perfect day… besmirched only by that one unfortunate encounter with the impudent Mainlander and her bizarrely ceramic savvy Super Mutant companion. The memory, though but a mere blip in the multifaceted landscape that was otherwise the formidable mind of one Allen Lee, lodged still as small yet as irreconcilable as a steel splinter.

  
It resonated a troubled tremor, rippling out from what cranial neurons were left available from Allen Lee’s admittedly rather limited supply and took up residence in the thin upper lip that resided beneath his flaky moustache; riddled with regret and anchovy entrails alike. It gave a solemn twitch; not unlike the dying throes of a distemper ridden weasel. A sign that, for all who knew Allen Lee (and there were so few who could boast, and whom would want to boast such a thing) signalled troubling seas ahead. The type of which would result in such boats of xenophobic moaning it would render any reasonable soul with but an ought of a functioning brain cell speechless in its wrath. But ho, if Allen Lee were not as like brother to the sea from which his lineage sprung; salty and stinking of fish and low tide.

  
And so, because he was a turbulent creature with a stomach that twisted in the depths with ire and octopi and stonefish aplenty, he muddled the facts of his unpleasant encounter over much longer than a mind such as his might otherwise have devoted to any such cause. (The obvious anarchistic wiling’s away of the Children of Atom and their pamphlet dispensing propaganda, notwithstanding). He picked it apart with not so much a pair of mental tweezers as with a set of rusted barbeque tongs; clacking the shops mould pocked security shutters into place.

  
As was the norm with the contrary mindset of Allen Lee, the specifics of the event had been subject to some serious alliteration and alteration in the four or so hours since they had transpired. (Allen Lee had since convinced himself that he had, in fact, re-educated the cheeky porcelain skinned vixen with a stern application of water-boarding and word-association Rorschach interpretations) Because, as his father had once so notoriously informed him: ‘ _What man let truth get in way of good story?_ ’ (Or had that been Aunt Hortense? It was always so difficult to tell...)

  
Having made the decision to relegate such concerns to the metaphorical back burner for the remainder of the evening, Allen Lee turned his attentions to far more pressing matters. With a temperate and ginger approach any normal human being might bestow upon a sleeping newborn, Allen Lee carefully extricated each of his cherished tea cups from their daily display positions atop the counter top. He transferred each to their cotton lined storage dividers; sliding the much beloved keepsakes into their custom fitted nook with greater care than an old-world scientist splitting the atom. This nightly process took Allen Lee approximately forty-five minutes to complete to his exacting specifications but it was a task he had absolutely no intention of rushing.

  
For though decades had long passed since the song bird had set wing from his heart, Allen Lee felt its loss just as intensely as he had that rainy, radiation suffused night. And Allen Lee was a man ever so intimately acquainted with loss, oh yes.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
 

For three long years, Allen Lee was able to resist the seductive siren call of the ceramic treasure trove; even whence forced to share a hay bedecked attic bedroom with it. To have such Venusian splendour dangled mere feet from him night after night felt too much to Allen Lee like holding a fresh anchovy just out of reach of a starving cat. The desire to simply dispense with his trepidations and well-founded patriarchal related fears and simply pounce upon the box and rip the mildewed cardboard sleeves away like a cat in heat was crippling. It gnawed at his shrunken, perpetually hollow stomach as nothing (save his mothers’ infamous Radscorpion, Stingwing Stinger and Bloatfly gland stew) had ever done before.

  
He managed mainly as a result of two contributory factors; a crippling fear of his domineering fathers’ reprisal and the considerate, appropriately timed expiration of his Great Aunt Hortense.

  
Allen Lee remembered the day well. It was his ninth birthday, and, such was the norm in the busy Lee household, was a day that was habitually and methodically, not remembered.

  
In spite of this trite and true tradition for relegating the spawning day of their eldest to the backburner of history, Allen Lee did his utmost in fact, to spur the memories of his everlastingly distracted parents. He lingered by his fathers’ elbow for much of that cold, March morning; watching as those thick hands, which might have resembled a bratwurst sausage if not for the protuberant callouses adorning each fingertip like a small, sovereign crown, shucking Mirelurk pincers by the fireplace as though the impenetrable carapaces posed as much resistance as a film of spider web. A hopeful smile besmirched Allen Lee’s pinched, grubby features, such as that which would typically adorn the visage of a terminally ill patient in a nursing home whence anticipating the visit of a greedy, conniving grandchild, whose only motivation in dropping by is to wrangle themselves the antique redwood dressing table that’s been in the family for eight generations.

  
It was to expected that Allen Lee senior, being a man both of few words and of terminal patience, quickly tired of his first born’s constant foul breathed malingering and with a brusque, ‘ _What you standin’ around for wit stupid smile on yer face, boy?!'_ clipped Allen Lee smartly beneath the ear and sent him on his way. It was the first time in four years that Allen Lee Senior had bequeathed the novelty of human touch upon his son (in competition alone to the kick in the backside he'd dispensed whence Allen Lee had failed to evacuate the hallway in a time suiting to his own unique stipulations) and as such, Allen Lee treasured it. Furthermore, whence considering his long-sustained departure from the world of common human decency, he regarded such an interaction as one to be cherished and held in stout reverence the swollen cauliflower shaped visage that had once been his left earlobe. What a kind man, his father was!

  
He did not expect much in the means of recognition from his mother; for she was quite naturally absorbed in the nursing and caring for of his younger, crate appropriating sister. She did however express her love in far subtler of ways; by dropping an errant piece of tripe onto the floor whence momentarily distracted from the pie that she was hurriedly assembling. (The form of the distraction came in Allen Lee once again unsuccessfully attempting to disinter his sister from his former boudoir, but means must, withal). One more bruise to the addition of that which currently adorned his earlobe, Allen Lee scuttled from the kitchen with his prize clenched in his grubby little fingers. He ambled on down the shacks small hallway, chewing in a fashion one would consider most unbefitting of a piece of over processed Brahmin offal and musing to himself on what an absolutely spiffing birthday he was having thus far. What could possibly cap off this, already most perfect of days?

  
It was in the midst of this unbridled contentment, that Allen Lee became suddenly aware of just how quiet this far end of the house was. A fair feat mind, given that the lodgings itself was barely larger than Gilda Broscoe's acting talent but it wasn’t as though his family provided much in the way of distraction. Truly, they were just as quiet as they ever were (Allen Lee seniors raucous late-night returns from the Last Plank, notwithstanding).

  
Allen Lee, betwixt the delicate act of mastication and gastro-intestinal interment, paused a moment. A strand of biological components went to a whirring within his mind; such as that in possession of a child's rubber band powered plane. For the quiet in itself was telling and it at once occurred to him that he hadn't yet paid a visit to his Aunt Hortense.

  
You might have supposed that Allen Lee had been clever enough to have made the connection whence not registering the familiar creaking of his Great Aunt's long since unoiled and unattended rocking chair but such a thing would be far too great an expectation for the mind of young Allen Lee.

  
What he might gain from his visit to his Great Aunt, one can scarcely imagine. It's not as though Aunt Hortense had precedent of mind (or indeed, precedent of anything much greater than drawing next breath and voiding next bowel movement) to ever have prepared a gift for her Great nephew. Why, one could safely argue that the eldest member of the Lee family wasn't the least aware that he existed, let alone that he required rewarding of the fact. But still, such was the ever-erstwhile nature of Allen Lee that he persisted still with his inevitable disappointment and trundled his inexplicably bow-legged and contrarily pigeon-toed legs down the long hall to where Aunt Hortense was most regularly found propped up before the sea facing window.

  
She was there, as was to be expected. Most certainly she had been precious little elsewhere in the last - however many years she'd taken up pride of place in the Lee household. Allen Lee reposed just offside of the rear of the rocking chair - for he had learned well in his formative years that any closer was simply asking for trouble - and cast a furtive, tentatively hopeful glance towards the tangled grey gnarl that composed the back of his great aunt's head.

  
No one could ever accuse Allen Lee of being a particularly intuitive child but even he could sense that something was slightly 'off kilter' (such as his father would say) with Aunt Hortense. It did in fact, take him much longer than he would later care to admit, to realize that what he had mistaken for his Great Aunt's steelo like crown of gray hair was simply a wizened, most likely mange ridden cat that had taken up temporary residence on Aunt Hortense’s chair. It didn't much appreciate Allen Lee's befuddled staring either and gifted him with a triplicate row of stinging red scratches to his rubicund dappled cheek for his efforts.

  
In the days before Sandra Lee had arrived (or Fag Ash Lil, as his father was sometimes prone to calling her) mother Lee wouldn't have gone a single day without painstakingly disinterring Aunt Hortense from her room and relocating her rapidly disintegrating carcass down the stairs to her weather-beaten old chair. Unbeknownst to Allen Lee, that morning had been a particularly jarring one for his mother; not only had she been forced to attend to a squalling toddler that had been insistent on being spoon feed boiled tarberries for breakfast but she was further belaboured by the very natural concern of her 'time of the month' being one week late. And when one takes stock of the very product whence sprang forth as a result of the pelvic union between herself and her husband, one could hardly begrudge her her anxiety, could one?

  
As such, when mother Lee had gone to check on Aunt Hortense and seen her apparently rugged up comfortably in her bed, she supposed all was as well as well could be. Who after all could blame the woman for wanting a bit of a lie in; given she was, at last estimation, a profligate centennial?

  
What mother Lee failed to gauge however and the sight which greeted poor doleful Allen Lee on this, his ninth birthday, was that Aunt Hortense was not in fact bundled up under her covers as expected. Her blankets had merely bunched together in such a way as to form a vaguely human like shape up against the far wall. Aunt Hortense was, after all, a mere waif of a thing in her elder years; weighing little more than a match stick with all of the wood scraped off of the sides. And finding this pin of a woman, in the veritable haystack of accumulated belongings that surmounted the boundaries of her bed like a miniaturized panorama of the skyscrapers of the world long gone, was nothing short of a herculean feat.

  
Allen Lee made a valiant attempt however; pushing his small, insubstantially muscled arms (string with a couple of knots in it, as his father described them) through the various piles of newspapers, copper stained gravy boats and ceramic cat statues with big, guppy like blue eyes. You might have thought him a genial child, to have attempted this seemingly valiant rescue of his ailing Aunt but such a gesture would be an overly generous assessment of Allen Lee's character. For in reality, the boy proceeded not out of love but rather from some sort of far-flung, cock-a-mami hope that his Aunt would, for whatever reason, be wiling her time away beneath this mountain of accumulated odds and sods with the most spectacular birthday gift a boy could possibly fathom. Perhaps a half-eaten Fancy Lads cake that wasn't too stale? Or even better; a kick ball with only three puncture marks in it!

  
Maybe it was for the best that Mrs. Lee arrived just in time to drag her son out from beneath the piles of teetering paraphernalia by his grubby little ankles. The sight of his deceased Great Aunt, wizened like a tato left unattended in the sun, would have undoubtedly contributed unhelpfully to the many, protracted neurosis’s that culminated the foundations of Allen Lee's adult personality decades down the track. (Though one could be forgiven for assuming that there was precious little that could have made Allen Lee’s personality more the charming than it already was).

  
What had likely transpired, so rationalized the usually torpid minds of the senior Lee's, was that Aunt Hortense had been struck by the passing fancy to disinter herself from her own bed (an occurrence usually preceded by her insistence that the Gerry's were 'blitzing') and had fallen spectacularly into her gargantuan pile of prehistoric knick knacks. The ensuing domino like fallout can only be imagined at and marvelled. Poor Aunt Hortense - her aged flesh possessing the tenacity of tissue paper and her bones as brittle as that of the runtiest bird to be found in the Radgull's nest. What chance did she have against the added might of her accumulated possessions; each as likely as worthless and unnecessary as the next?

  
It took a solid fortnight and the combined efforts of four of the strongest men from the Harbour to finally extract Aunt Hortense from her makeshift tomb. During the course of this rather protracted exhumation period, Allen Lee learned, through the passing of grunted offsides between the harbour men, that Great Aunt Hortense had in fact been of his father’s kin and cared for by his mother only out of marital ingratiation. It seemed a strange thing to Allen Lee; given that he failed to remember a time when his father had paid the least attention to his Aunt. He had in fact paid her as little notice as the ocean pays to the errant leaf that flutters into its frothy grip. Though if he were to give it further contemplation (a stretch of mental fortitude any member of the Lee family would find quite unnecessary and time consuming) Allen Lee supposed that his father had in fact snarked at her least of anyone in this house. This could, in more adjusted households, be mistaken as some sign of affection.

  
Ever the more surprising, was that Mr. Lee spared no expense in giving his Aunt a proper send off. He dipped into his savings account (a disused, mollusc covered safe he kept submerged somewhere off of the port) and arranged for a casket to be fashioned from the least algae riddled wood that could be ripped from the old wrecks dotting the borders of Far Harbor. He burned handfuls of random herbs that he had tugged up by the root from the clay riddled borders of the local lake; one of which rendered the entire Lee family incomprehensible and strangely giggly for the passing twenty-four hours. Mrs. Lee pumiced the house unrestrainedly; potting vibrant mixtures of Asher and carrot blossoms and dotting them about the domicile with the sort of ham-fisted over attention to detail which suggested to Allen Lee that something unusual was about to happen.

  
Sure enough, when the very last tinge of slimy green had been carefully sluiced from the curtain rods, an influx of people descended on the Lee household in a force unprecedented and never in all the years since, to be repeated. Aunt Hortense, it transpired, had known a lot of people in her younger years and it seemed to Allen Lee that every single one of them saw fit to traipse their clay griddled feet through his house in the days that were to follow. You might suspect that it was out of some primordial regard for Aunt Hortense that such a bevy of people attended her wake but one must remember that this was of course Far Harbour; a fog riddled locale with little in the means of entertainment. The fact that the Lee’s had decided, against the local chaplain’s advice nonetheless, to have an open casket viewing, was certainly a talking point and something that titillated the nightmares of the child populace for many years to come. Even with Mrs. Lee’s admirable skillsets in post-mortem makeup and home-style embalming, Aunt Hortense failed to look (and smell) anything other than three weeks deceased.

  
Allen Lee’s first encounter with death failed to leave the lasting impact you might have suspected from such a confronting experience. Truthfully, as he observed the comings and goings of the various lookie-loo's of Far Harbour (a majority of which appeared to be elderly men, strangely enough) Allen Lee was struck not so much by grief but by a perplexing and invasive emotion that would serve him well in the later years of his life. Namely, how was such a thing going to be of convenience to him? Allen Lee might have only been a seven-year-old child but he knew full well, even then, that he was a consummate survivor.

~~~~~~~~~~

 Aunt Hortense may not have been of a mind sound enough to prepare a birthday gift for Allen Lee, but she had, in dying, unintentionally bestowed upon him perhaps the very greatest present of his young life. Namely that of transgressing dramatically into the light and permanently vacating her old room. The room that Allen Lee would now, as the eldest child and the one whom until now had never known the joy of privacy or indeed an actual mattress, would have the luxury... of sharing with his little sister.

  
So, it might not have been the exact arrangement he desired but it was certainly worlds above the spider strewn haystack in the loft that he had, until now, begrudgingly called home. His parents had even been courteous enough to bestow upon their children two separate beds; one of which had previously belonged to Aunt Hortense, the other of which had been uncovered when her assortment of junk had been ferried out and unceremoniously sold to any which passer-by might have stumbled up on it.

  
It was one night, not a week following Aunt Hortense’s relocation to her new abode (with a coverlet composed of six feet of dirt) that Allen Lee awoke from a feverish dream; his young brow pricked with beads of sweat as big and as round as the eyes of a sea bream. He panted, his breath heavy with a fervour that in an adult might be interpreted as lust. His tiny, perpetually dirt smeared fingers clutched his threadbare blanket up tight and close to an already ineffectually moribund chin. His eyes panned the dark room, moonlight streaming from the window illuminating dust particles in the air and his little sisters sleeping face; upper lip crusted with a thick moustache composed of dry snot and saliva. 

  
It had been a most peculiar dream, Allen Lee supposed. One of great need and intensity. He had been dreaming of a scene his mother had once, in one of her admittedly limited moments of free time, read to him from a book called Dallas in Dunderland. It was about a young girl, with an admittedly strange name, falling down a rabbit hole and waking up in an equally strange land where the bizarre was as ubiquitous as was the mundane in the world of Allen Lee. At length, she had found herself attending a tea party, thrown by a March Radrabbit and a Rad Batter. (Allen Lee could only suppose that a Rad Batter was someone in possession of a hickory swatter and an oversaturation of radiation).

  
In the dream however, it had been Allen Lee and not Dallas, who had been in attendance at the Rad Batter’s tea party. He remembered plucking up the tea cup, seeing upon its perfectly glazed and smooth surface, that very same songbird which had graced the circumference of the receptacle he had uncovered in his Aunt’s box of assortments in the attic. And he had awoken with such a longing that he was no longer able to wilfully suppress it.

  
In spite of the risk it posed (that of further aggravating an already distant father who expressed disappointment just by virtue of how Allen Lee saw fit to breathe) the temptation proved too great and it was with ever so infinitesimally mounting trepidation, that Allen Lee eased one pale, quivering foot, down onto the cold and damp floorboards. He tiptoed across the room with the grace of a drunken, club footed Angler; sending the uneven planks of wood to singing with each step he took. He felt such a racing of his heart it was little wonder the organ didn’t up and abandon the cage of his chest at any given moment. Very little could have compelled him to have risked this newfound happiness in which he found himself transposed but Allen Lee felt ever so strongly that the dream had been something of a sign. Like a Jet Junkie ever compelled by the elusive cannister shaped carrot, he found himself drawn with a prolific magnetic cadence ever onward; up the narrow, dew bedewed stairwell and into the waiting arms of the attic herself.

  
He remembered all too well, he did. Oh, yes. Allen Lee might have been nary a biological blip in the universal maelstrom of the human race but his was a mind incomparably unique. Sharply honed, such as a splintered stick taken to wet clay and particularly adept at clinging to past injuries and inconveniences with a tenacity surpassed only by Velcro, indolent specks of glitter and blood sucking tics.

  
He remembered all too well, the rapture like bliss that appeared to elevate his soul to unforeseen heights, when he had held that perfect porcelain cup between his hands. Gazed in wonderment upon her beautifully painted visage; those smooth white curves, the deft strokes of blue and black upon her breast, which formed then the palette that was the blue songbird herself. That ever so teasing strip of gold glancing down through the delicate handle; lilting coyly from where it chose to once again meet the jaunting hip of the cup. In the years since it had struck Allen Lee that there was something strangely intimate about such an image. It brought to mind a beautiful, yet equally delicate woman; standing in the doorway of the home, fingers perched upon staunch waist and eyes both knowing and scolding in the same gesture.

  
Though the songbird was gone, Allen Lee knew that within the mildewed carboard box within which she once soundly resided, there were more of her kin at rest. Waiting simply to be roused from their slumber by the earnest and deeply reverential stirring of his pious hands. Hands that kneaded and fisted at the crinkled base of his gravy spattered blue and white striped night shirt as he commando crawled on his belly across the straw and black mould bedecked floor of the attic; beady eyes peering out through the darkness for the distinct sharp corners of that temptation laden box that had been his nightly companion for all those long years. Since the eve of the breaking of the songbird, he had never dared encroach upon its nest again; fearful that his father would prove omniscient in such matters and punish him further for his ‘unmanly’ proclivities.

  
But the itch that Allen Lee desired so desperately to scratch, was to remain unsated further still. For, in the unprecedented biblical cleansing of the house, it appeared that his parents had seen fit to dispose of Aunt Hortense’s ceramic collection as well. And no amount of truffle hunting-esque antics on Allen Lee’s part was sufficient to uncover what simply wasn’t there to be found.

  
Well, he felt quite as if the songbird had broken at his feet all over again. Little did he know that it was the start of a very long life of systematic impotence and unfulfilled desire but Allen Lee was still yet a child and hadn’t the years yet to be lived to harden him somewhat to the flagrant unfairness of the world. He might have wept, if fear of his father’s reprisal hadn’t once again struck him dumb. So on he crawled, down from the attic and slunk back to his own bed and beneath the thin, prickly covers such as a spurned dog that had felt a hot spoon to its testicles. Hot tears slid down over his ruddy little cheeks and he sniffled into one of the very few patches of his mattress that didn’t have a tetanus riddled spring of coiled wire poking up out of it. Why he felt such sadness he wasn’t certain and it puzzled him somewhat; that for the passing of his Great Aunt Hortense, he felt the loss of her collection of ceramics with an intensity of emotion far greater than anything he had felt before.

  
~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Such as it was, that Allen Lee found his life growing ever the more confounding by the moment. If he thought the curiosities of his own soul were something at which to be marvelled, nothing could prepare him for what was coming.

  
It was mere weeks following Allen Lee’s discovery (or rather, non-discovery) in the attic. He was standing on the figurative coat-tails of the family home, scraping clay and mud clods from the furrows of his best pair of shoes (one of which actually possessed laces, nothing surer) when he was distracted from his task by such a cacophony of squawking that it would have referred more educated minds to something of a Hitchcockian-appropriate, eyeballs rent from skulls advertence. Allen Lee eased his wind blasted little face tentatively about the corner of the sea burnished shanty and alit upon a sight as astonishing in its very nature as was the fact that any functioning human being would willingly dedicate their time to writing his putrescent little biography.

There sat Mr. Lee, the crowning jewel perched upon an equally as obstinate rock, such that he resembled nothing less than a grizzled, fuzz bedecked Gargoyle. Tearing chunks from a loaf of bread, declared to be so far gone that even the perpetually grumbling stomach of Allen Lee would have chanced a second opinion before placing such a mould riddled carapace near his mouth. With a careless flick of his thick, hairy wrist, Mr. Lee tossed these stale offcuts into the crowd of Radgulls that swarmed about his rock such as an admiring crowd to the arrival of some old world Royal. His dark eyes peered out over the magnificent, sea-foam flecked rancour of his mighty beard; the smallest smile of what Allen Lee could only suppose was... affection, marring the usually impenetrable mans’ lips. Why, he seemed almost... fond of the squalling, barely feathered wretches pecking about near his feet.

Now, it wasn’t for Allen Lee to ponder the involute Labyrthine that was the soul of his phlegmatic father but the scene before him, irrespective of how such a thing had occurred, gave him... hope. Perhaps Mr. Lee had not been quite so unaffected by the passing of his Aunt’s death as Allen Lee had originally supposed? Perhaps this moment of consideration and softness towards a weaker, infinitely lesser species, was his means of seeking a moment of solace in this big, wide, merciless world?

Allen Lee turned on his heel, making his way back towards the rear door of the shanty; feeling as though a crack of light had shone through in the perpetually shuttered eaves that surrounded his heart. He didn’t of course see the two by four his father held clutched in his left hand and how the smile on Mr. Lee’s face didn’t alter a jot as he brought the plank of wood smartly down on the cawing head of the nearest, indolently pecking Radgull. Nor did Allen Lee thread the connection to the steaming roast carcass of the bird that graced their dining table that night. His nubile mind was preoccupied with far more important things; namely that of the upcoming Sea Farer’s Festival.

  
The Sea Farer’s Festival was held on the same date every year (the last Wednesday of May) and hosted a number of events, stalls and competitions as a means of fostering moral among the entertainment deprived citizens of the island. One of the events, most frequently indulged in by the children, was a costume competition.

  
Allen Lee had decided. He was going to win the Far Harbour Sea Farers Costume Competition (Under 10 division). And he would win it, no less, whence robed in the magnificent panama of the oft unappreciated bird, quietly revered by his indomitable father.

  
Allen Lee would win that competition and more importantly, he would win the approval he so desperately sought from his father. He would be elevated to the impeachable and austere status of manhood (so far as one can be when they are lacking the necessary requirement of fuzzy, masculine facial adornment).

  
He set the plan in motion that very next morning. Owing to the collective sum of Far Harbour inhabitants believing that institutionalized education was an unnecessary distraction from more important things (such as fishing, chopping wood and offhandedly mounting one another) Allen Lee hadn’t the obstruction of scholarly obligations to compete with, and so spent the morning waist deep in the mothball riddled depths of his departed Aunt’s walk in. Whilst the majority of Hortense’s garments had been sequestered by Mr. Lee for the noble purpose of cleaning coagulant grease from his gun parts, there were numerous articles remaining which held little purpose aside from the provision of affordable housing to silver fish.

  
Allen Lee marvelled at some of the long since retired attires; some spangled, some stretchy, some... questionable. One in particular; a full-piece, skin tight rubber suit with a strategically located zipper and a red rubber ball where the mouth ought to have been, was certainly a conversation starter. For his purposes however, Allen Lee thought it a fine choice; whence coupled with two great voluminous feather dresses that he reefed apart with the same gleeful impunity his mother regularly demonstrated when plucking a dead Rad chicken. He then selected two firm, twig free branches that he had scavenged from the yard, draped them in shade cloth and spent a few, tireless hours painstakingly gluing the feathers to both them and the rubber suit itself. For feet, he resurrected an aged pair of bright yellow galoshes and painted black toenails on the ends of them.

  
Constructing a suitable beak proved more of a challenge, however. But lo and behold if Allen Lee’s dear departed aunt didn’t posthumously come to his rescue once again. There at the rear of the cupboard, tucked nigh coyly beneath an aged blue poster advertising the _**Rapture Masquerade Ball of 1959**_ , was an exquisitely ornate black and white feathered mask with a long, pointed beak. Though slightly bedewed by some errant spots of what appeared to be red paint, Allen Lee wasn’t put off in the slightest. With a tender reverence befitting that of a Priest solemnly removing a pyx from the sacred tabernacle, he elevated the beauteous mask from its wherewithal resting place and brought it closer so as to properly inspect it. Circumvented at the uplifted corners of the eyeholes with an adornment of glittering white beads... its smooth surface transcribed with swirling gold branches that might have brought to mind the stark, sea burnt trees upon which the Radgull might have perched itself during the day... that noble beak; terminating into a sharp, prudent point...

  
It was... perfect. And not the least requiring of any further embellishments. Bedecked in the near entirety of his homespun accomplishment, Allen Lee raised his trembling fingers towards his ruddy features and carefully slid the bird mask over his face. An elastic band stretched neatly up over the crown of his head and rested snugly in the dandruff flecked cowlick situated just above the highest nub of his spine. The strap required nothing in the way of adjustment and to Allen Lee this couldn’t have been more of a sign than if it had jumped in front of him twirling a road marker with all the verve and aplomb of an attention deficit teenager who was prone to random bouts of marker sniffing and deodorant chroming. This... this was meant to be. As Allen Lee stood in front of the cracked shaving mirror his father had propped up on the bathroom shelf and spread his makeshift wings wide, he felt more sure of it than ever. He was meant to find that mask. He was meant to wear it.

 

He was _meant_ to win The Seafarer’s Costume Competition (Under 10 division).

  
And so, when the fated day finally arrived, Allen Lee took himself off to that secret nook in the woodshed and within, transformed himself into the magnificent rubber suit and feather crested Radgull he felt in his heart, he had always been. When he slid that magnificent mask down over his face, why, he could have been anyone in the world. It made sense to him then why perhaps his father approached the world with such overt confidence; as though never the least doubting his place within it. Having a beard must have felt very much like... wearing a mask in some ways. Having that tangled, grizzled hank suspended from upon your chin like a low hanging sloth must have provided some manner of... disconnect. Of protection. In simply putting on the mask itself, Allen Lee felt a surge of confidence such as he had never known.

  
Away he strode; through the mist capped hills of the surrounding woodland and down along the path towards the village. He hadn’t uttered a word to his parents about his participation in the Seafarer’s Costume Competition; having wanted to make it a surprise. It wasn’t likely that they wouldn’t turn up; free food samples aplenty and a twenty percent discount on drinks at the Public House. ‘ _Where else would any good God fearin’ Far Harbourman be found?_ ’ his father used to say; whilst painstakingly swirling his gravy bedewed middle finger about the base of a baked bean can. Which he would then crush between his fist, with nary a batting of an eyelid. No, it was ludicrous to suppose they might be anywhere else. The whole island would be there. All would bear witness to this; Allen Lee’s greatest triumph.

It was an unseasonably wonderful day, Allen Lee thought, glancing about with a cheerful ambience through the eyeholes of the feathered mask. The late morning sun beamed through the branches of the overhanging trees; such that the rays splintered and formed curious patterns upon the mossy floor of the forest. The air was warm; such that Allen Lee felt perfectly cool and comfortable in his rubber suit. He gave a perfunctory flap of his wings; feeling as though he might take off and fly at any moment. He raced along the woodland path; feet too small for the large galoshes encasing them, slipping about within their slippery confines. He surged up the small hill that lead out through the thicket of trees that ensconced his family home like an overbearing lover and bounded out into the field beyond.

No more a perfect sight could be envisioned. The sun shone down magnanimously from above; lighting the entirety of the field with a warm, golden glow. Flowers coquettishly offered their nectar laden bays to the passing interest of gently buzzing, pollen varnished bumblebees. A flirtatious pair of blue jays, sick with the pangs of first love and a restlessness befitting that of early spring, flitted to and fro amidst the surrounding trees and long grass. Dancing their perfect, devout courtship waltz; as it were.

It appeared as though Allen Lee was not alone in his appreciation of the fields beauty. A family were currently in the midst of settling themselves down for a midday picnic; no less than fifty or so feet from where Allen Lee had disinterred himself from within the tree line. The father, pale yellow shirt tucked neatly into his equally pressed brown slacks and a smile that might have won him a sponsorship in a charcoal commercial (if such a thing as commercials ever had cause to exist in such a disinterested locale as Far Harbour) was in the midst of whipping out a lovely red and white checked picnic blanket. The mother, statuesque, auburn hair styled into neat curls and donned with a summers hat; waited patiently nearby with the picnic basket clutched in one slender hand. She wore a dress of a type Allen Lee hadn’t seen before; thick straps reaching up over her shoulders and wide at the base, with a pattern of black polka dots against a white background. Her shoes were peculiar as well. Whereas Mrs Lee nearly always wore either fish gut studded house shoes or threadbare slippers, this woman wore pointed black shoes with a heel on the back of them. Both of which appeared to be currently sinking deep into the perpetually soft and squidgy Far Harbour grass but she hardly looked the least perturbed by it. Her slender, rosy cheeked face was all smiles; namely for her well groomed husband and the equally well groomed boy at her side. Buttoned up, rugged up and carefully coifed in such a fashion that anyone other than Allen Lee might have found it overbearing. But to him, the sight of those perfectly ironed clothes; most likely smelling of fresh wash powder and not the heady odour of haddock and mildew perpetually clinging to Allen Lee’s, sent a panging through the boys heart.

  
This was nothing however, to compare with the overwhelming tidal wave of emotion that curdled up from the core of Allen Lee’s being like a tsunami composed entirely of boiling milk, when the mother set the basket down upon the blanket and, with an elegant flick of her delicate wrist, extricated from within the woven chambers a ceramic teapot with intricate gold inlay.

  
It was not this feature however that struck Allen Lee into the poise of a near muted (save for some glib, emotional burbling) statue, however. It was the songbird; blue, wreathed in leaves and mid-flight upon the surface of the teapot that captured his heart and wrought to the forefront of his memory that night in the attic so many distant moons ago.

 

The songbird.

 

She had returned to him.

 

_**At a picnic, not fifty feet away...**  _

 

“Would you like another biscuit, Stanley?” His mother asked, her ruby red lips poised into that ever present heart shape that was as rich and as round as a drop of blood. Stanley smiled, taking the proffered Arrowroot from his mothers’ gracefully manicured fingers and dipping the edge into his own cup of tea; rich English breakfast. The biscuit mushed between his teeth; lighting sweet and sugary upon his tongue. He savoured the taste, just as he savoured the feeling of the sun on his face and the warm, gentle breeze against his skin. Little more could one ask for ones’ eighth birthday.

  
He was an artistic boy, you see and had shown exceptional skill far beyond his years whence put to drawing or painting at the Commonwealth’s one and only school in Diamond City. Having wanted to challenge himself further, he begged his parents to take him to the island of Far Harbour; a place where the trees and the woodlands were far the more recovered than the sparse Wasteland of the Commonwealth. Here, he would put his skills to the test and paint the most beautiful paintings the world had ever seen.

  
Well, so his teacher would have him believe, anyway. According to him, Stanley was well on his way to bigger and better things. And in a world where beauty was at a premium, why, it wouldn’t have surprised him in the least if people weren’t prepared to pay through the nose for some meagre affiliation with it. In a few short years, Stanley aimed to be supporting his parents with his art. He would repay them, in kind, for all the love, support and kindness they had shown him throughout the years. And in so doing, make the world a softer, kinder and infinitely more paradisiac place to be.

  
And to say nothing of this wonderful repast they had prepared for his birthday! To suggest that he felt himself a spoiled boy would be very much an understatement. Roast beef sandwiches cut into tiny, gossamer triangles, a plethora of his favourite sweet biscuits, roasted radchicken legs, a half-wheel of superlatively aged cheese, three boxes of Fancy Lad’s Snack cakes and some of the finest tea that their impoverished (and really, rather puerile if one might be so bold) domicile of Diamond City had to offer. Though Stanley supposed that even the most _lumpen_ of tea would fail to rise to prominence when ensconced in the recherche selvage of his mother’s prize tea set.

  
Handed down from generation to generation, since long before the time of the great war, it was a collection as distinguished as it was envied. Each family member, whence in recipience of this vintage tea set, was charged with a unique set of responsibilities. Namely, the continued and ever unerring restoration of the paintwork, the infinitesimal repairs to the delicate bone china, the frangible little touch ups to the gold inlay. Many a time, young Stanley had borne witness to his mother’s ever tasteful yet undeniably august and enthused _rodomontades_ concerning the tea set. Her loving care and deliberation to its timely and often cap consuming upkeep; skills which she had in turn passed along to Stanley, so that he too might one day assume responsibility for the treasured keepsakes. It is how, he supposed, that he had refined his aerial technique with the paintbrush; having to render such soft, delicate strokes to an even more fragile, unforgiving surface. With his mothers proud and watchful eye ever upon him; praising him in turn for his reverence and respect in this very much cherished labour of love.

  
It was, without a doubt, one of her most cherished possessions. Each piece as precious as the last. To lose one, would in turn not merely diminish the worth of this inimitable array but abolish it entirely. As Stanley’s mother had so verily impressed upon him; a collection is nothing if it is not complete.

  
Hence why he could rationally fathom his mothers reaction when, from the borders of the imperceptible, a rogue appeared at their blanket side; face shielded by a white, avian themed mask that did little to hide the demented languishing blasting out from the upturned slits that formed the eye holes. This ruffian’s entire ensemble was as equally as startling as was the blaring whites of its unnaturally distended sclera; skintight black leather, liberally plastered with feathers, yellow waders splattered with paint, some sort of makeshift wings... Stanley of course had heard about Raider’s from his parents and that they often dressed in an unconventional manner but the habour men had assured them that this was a safe and routinely patrolled area! How could such a thing be happening?

  
From what he had heard of Raider’s, he had assumed that this bounder was most likely to demand they part with their caps or their food, if anything. Hence why he considered it quite a peculiar thing, to see this feathery hooligan alight to the centre of their picnic blanket and snatch from the supportive plate that cradled it; his mother’s tea pot. Seeming to be in possession of neither pockets, nor knapsack, the Raider seemed to be momentarily at a loss as to how to proceed. Remedied when, after having taking a brief glance down along the line of his person, happened upon a handy zip and with a stout flick of his wrist, tugged it open. The fact that it near exposed the length of the goons pubic region appeared to be of little concern to the felon, as he was far more preoccupied with wedging the entire steaming body of the teapot into the recesses of his inside thighs. An unpermitted transference of ownership that Stanley’s mother, quite rightly, took immediate umbrage to.

  
She lunged for him; uttering some chest deep, fluting warble of offense whence resorted to by most women whence protesting the uncensored departure of their belongings. The Raider responded with the timely deliverance of an aerodynamically unfeasible scorpion kick; of a variety that would give Ip man pause for consideration. His oversized yellow gumboot with its garishly painted strokes of thick jagged black (Stanley couldn’t yet imagine what the lout had been thinking whence applying these vulgar adornments) collected the poor woman square to the side of her pristinely painted face; knocking out three of her molars on impact and neatly cleaving the bone of her jaw in half. She pitched backward, her checked dress flying up high on her hips to reveal a set of underpants quite unlike anything Stanely would have ever considered appropriate to wear to a seven-year-old child's birthday picnic.

  
Having witnessed the unbridled assault of his loving wife, Stanley’s father; a retired Brotherhood of Steel Paladin and hand to hand combat specialist, immediately withdrew the 10mm handgun that he kept religiously stapled to his hip at all times. It was ripped from his bawdy fingers as though as insubstantial as a paper doll and the feather adorned lout, so as to add insult to injury, saw fit then to offload an unnecessarily flagrant donkey kick to his father’s midsection; catapulting the retired veteran somehow six feet into the air and sending his ragdoll like body down to land headfirst on a small outcropping of rocks nearby.

  
Stanley’s bladder loosened as the Raider turned on gumbooted heel; sensing ho, that the time had come at last for him to hence forth and shuffle off that mortal coil. But the felon it seemed, had not the least interest in him; less still in the tenderly iced and only yet recently crowned with one blazing candle birthday cake, that he sank one of those clay caked galoshes into as he turned and lit his feathered wake back to the mist dappled hills from whence he came. Leaving Stanely with the crushed remnants of his family, his birthday, his dreams...

  
A mother, whom in the weeks following, had required extensive surgery to wire her jaw back together. How, whence coupled with the already exuberant cost of travelling to Far Harbour; had sent the family into a downhill spiral of debt that they were unable to bounce back from. Never mind that of keeping her husband on life support and the additional cost associated with his continued treatments; each as costly as it was complicated. The depression that assailed her. The selling of most everything that wasn’t nailed down; cemented furthermore and irrefutably by Stanley’s painting supplies and the now incomplete and infinitely less valuable centuries old tea set. How Stanley had to start dancing on the street for money. How his father had one year later, awoken from his coma with one steel plate in his head and a number of major contusions to the frontal and temporal lobes. Afflictions that rendered him far the more simple minded than he had ever been and incapable, as such, of marshalling his impulse control. How he eventually ended up living with the leather booted and red lipstick wearing lady with the bouncy big hair that Stanley’s mother had been forever telling him to give a wide berth to. How he ended up playing drums for one cap an hour by the bar; interspersed by him routinely blistering his lip with one espoused index finger, to which he would trill what some folks irrefutably stated was _Ballad of the Green Beret’s_. A bitter end to what had been over fifteen years of loving courtship and a culmination Stanley’s mother might wont to bemoan as such; if she had been capable of parting her jaw enough to let all that caged emotion bellow free.

  
It was his picnic, Stanley knew. His picnic that would forever serve as that indomitable tombstone to mark the death of what had been, until that very day, the blissful and joyous family known as the Pickman’s.

  
_**But back to our hero!** _

 

How long he had been running, he couldn’t even begin to imagine. It was all such a blur. Such a blur!

  
What had he, Allen Lee, done? Had he really sunk so low as to ruefully accost a peacefully picnicking family all for want of wrenching a fancifully painted teapot from their trembling fingers? And to resort to such craven acts of violence in turn! He remembered still the terrible crunching sound the mothers jaw had made; how her bow embellished summer hat had gone flying off of her head like some ornate spaceship being steered by a prohibitively intoxicated crew. The patriarch flipping through the air such as a wooden puppet being hurled from the hand of an irate child long since tired of the minimalistic pleasures it offered. And the boy – the boy! Little older than he, Allen Lee and looking all for the world as though every solace he had ever known had been ruthlessly ripped from the very fiber of his being!

  
Never in his short and oftentimes purportless life had Allen Lee opportunity to strike little more than meagre annoyance into the hearts of those around him. For years he had watched, a mere spectator to the stalwart presence of his prodigious father; broad, bearded and with forearms as thick and as leathery as a Brahmin’s rump. A man whom, in entering a room and appraising it with nary but a vacillating sniff, could elevate the blood pressure of all those unfortunate enough to find themselves betwixt his insurmountable presence.

  
Somewhere amidst the adrenaline marinated jumble that was his mind, Allen Lee felt the smallest quiver of something that felt all too faintly of... satisfaction. An emotion sadly as foreign to him as the nomadic peoples of Ancient Peru and one more the likely to visit upon him lesser and less still in his later years. But one so ever poignant and seductive. Which assailed the cordons of his nerve endings with an opiate like intensity.

  
Interred at last, deep within the surrounding woodlands and with the mighty trees serving as his faithful protectors, Allen Lee knew, without a doubt that it had all been worth it. To slide that silver zipper back down beneath the meeting of his thighs and to carefully extract the treasure from within.

  
_Oh my..._

 

That perfectly contoured body; surmounted by strips of the most delicately woven gold. The wanton curves of her porcelain inlay; seeming to lean almost knowingly into the waiting palm of his hand, pliant to his urgent, needing caresses. And there, ever the more resplendent than he had remembered; dothed as she had been in the unflattering green lights of the radiation dappled attic. The songbird. Quite certainly the very same as she who had flown free from the grip of his tiny, uncultivated fingers all those years ago.

  
And lo, if not there in that very moment did Allen Lee feel all the tiresome, nagging voices that had purloined the walls of his soul go finally and thankfully silent. He felt a peace, such as he had never felt before. An intrinsic knowing, broached from the farthest and yet wisest port of his being which said that yes, yes! Things were as they were meant to be.

  
Such was the transcendence of his euphoric state that it took some moments for Allen Lee’s body to make the rest of him aware of the thing that was so terribly wrong. Namely, that shoving a steaming hot teapot into the vicinity of your bare thighs and holding it in place with tightly zippered skin-tight black leather was a bad idea.

  
He had sense enough to place the teapot down gently among some moss dappled foliage before launching Radstag like towards the small pond conveniently situated nearby. The pain by this stage had quite naturally taken precedence over his disequilibrium and it was with many audible and vocal squeals and squeaks such that you might expect of a distressed guinea pig, that Allen Lee managed to disinter most of his lower half from the zipper of his costume. The wings of which he had been so proud became a natural hindrance and he hurled them off to the side, able to use both hands now to quickly funnel water onto his very red and quickly blistering thighs and their interior adornment. (Which, if one were to be honest, was quite accustomed at this stage to being left in a raw and battered state).

  
The application of a handful of asher nearby proved to not quite be so soothing to burns as one of the local children had told him and simply resulted in Allen Lee frantically splashing and dashing more water over his genitals in a desperate bid to remove the small stinging nettles that had interred themselves to his skin. Flocks of birds had taken off out of the surrounding trees; naturally disturbed from their rest by the disconcerting medley of inappropriate grunts, groans and yelps coming from below. Such was the pain, the stinging and the burning that Allen Lee couldn’t imagine how things could possibly be worse!

  
“Here now, boy! What the hell ya think ya be doin’ -  standin’ in t’middle of t’ pond tuggin’ on yerself? Yer a disgrace, Allen Lee!”

 

_**Far Harbour – Current day...** _

 

Allen Lee supposed now, in his later, learned years, that he couldn’t really truly begrudge his father for his reaction. He had after all been standing in a pond in the middle of the woods, wearing a bird mask, a black leather suit and appearing for all intents and purposes to be interfering with himself. He did however feel that sending him off for four years to live with the Far Harbour monks (to ‘work the unnaturalness out of him’) had been perhaps something of an overreaction. But that was a story for another time.

  
Quite the worst of it, in his mind at least, was that his father had liberally dragged him from the woodlands without having given him time to retrieve the teapot. If he had thought the loss of the songbird in the attic all those years earlier had stung, well, it paled in comparison to the exquisite pain rent his soul (and scrotum) that day in the woods.

  
He supposed she remained there still, to this very day. No amount of searching had ever yielded her whereabouts and he couldn’t imagine anyone could have searched as far or as wide as he had done. He felt the loss of her just as exquisitely as he had always done, especially so, when the weather changed and caused the old burn marks upon his thighs to twinge uncomfortably.

  
Having set his cherished collection to rights at long last, Allen Lee dressed in the favoured pinstripe nightshirt he wore to bed each night. (All the better to take the pressure of the ‘old injury’). He took from grizzled head his woollen hat, ran a comb through his hair and beard and awayed at long last beneath the sheets with hot water bottle at his feet and his very favourite book ‘Taxidermy gone wrong’ propped astride his bent knees. Though it was a fine book (and felicitously illustrated) Allen Lee found his mind wandering.

  
He thought again of the audacious girl he had met at the store that day.

  
The brazen eyes. The haughty and unfamiliar twang of her voice.

  
The pale curves of her cheeks...

  
He felt a twinge and thought it a rather odd thing; for the weather was cool, foggy and much the same as it had always been.

 

  
_**The Mainland...**  _

 

Bartering had not won the old man any favours. It had merely prolonged the conversation to a stratum that Stanley Pickman found to be most untenable. And blunted the blade of what had been one of his more faithful of knives.

  
There wasn’t much to be done. So few persons were in possession of a vessel capable of travelling the distance between the Mainland and Far Harbour. And with the Nakano family’s only boat now being in possession of the wanderer he had so fancifully taken to calling ‘Killer’, his choices were limited. This retired gentleman of the sea, converted still tentatively to that of a landlubbers ‘life of leisure’ had been his only recourse. Such a shame the fellow had persisted with his humour. The result may in fact have been a lot less... untidy.

  
One would be quite wrong to assume that Stanley derived any such satisfaction from the killing of innocent persons (even those that insisted on wasting his time). It was those awful Raider’s to whom he most readily dealt the art of his blade and brush; their pain and torment the ochre which he would then transcribe upon canvas for all the world to see. It had been enough, all these years, to make them pay in turn for what which had been stolen from him all those years ago. But lately, a splinter had taken root in the core of his being and demanded of him greater and more accurate attestations in order to render it still and acquiescent once more.  
It was the Raider of Far Harbour, not these insolent louses of humanity whom had wrought apart the very fabric of his world. The Raider of Far Harbour who had, for so long, gone unpunished in the fog cloaked isle upon which his innocence had been violently slain.

  
It had been over thirty-five years since that fateful day. But Stanley Pickman had learned patience at his mothers knee. And that patience was at long last, about to pay off.

**~**


End file.
